uncharted

About two years or so ago, I started a quasi-ritual. Every morning that I was needing motivation, I wrote on the inside of my left wrist. In sharpie, very small, and few words. It almost always was a song lyric or title. The first was "Don't Do Sadness" (from Spring Awakening). Other times it might be "Swim" (courtesy Andrew McMahon).  Or "Seize the Day" (Newsies).  All were inspirational for me.... push onward. McMahon wrote Swim while he fought cancer, with lyrics of "you've gotta swim/ swim for your life/ swim for the music that saves you/ when you're not so sure you'll survive." In Spring Awakening, Moritz was overwhelmed with life and tried to fight back, saying he wouldn't "do sadness, not even a little bit." All reminders that things aren't that bad, I just have to dig in.

For the last couple of months the word has become Uncharted. A couple of people have noticed and commented upon it, saying it was an odd choice, but never asking further what it meant. Ms Sara Bareilles, my generation's piano songstress (a la Carole King), is the author of this sentiment. And it is a constant reminder of my research and work.

During one of her live performances, Sara explains that this song is the "centerpiece" of her second album because she was petrified, unable to get over the writer's block associated with the "sophomore slump" so seemingly ever-present in pop music today. She said this got her over all her fears: "I didn't know if I had anything important to say. And it turns out I did, and it started with this song." One of its lyrics became the title of the album "Kaleidoscope Heart." And I am in love with the sentiment; as she puts it "It's all about being scared of the unknown, and realizing that the only way around it is through it."

I first just enjoyed the general piano groove she wrote (forgive the vagueness of that-- I'd rather not go all music theoretical analysis here), but then I kept hearing this lyric "compare where you are to where you want to be and you'll get nowhere." I didn't understand. In my mind, you're supposed to look where you want to be-- that's what goals are-- I see the end point that I want to get there. But I realized all I was thinking in the last year was getting the phd, getting a job, and building a house back on my family's ranch. The pressure of "will I get a job" which seriously is YEARS down the road was engulfing me. So I re-assessed my approach. Baby steps. I'm in my late 20s. I have 70 years to get back to the family farm. It might take a while, so let's just focus on the work here and now.

My life, my work is best left *uncharted*. I don't have to have the dissertation outlined tomorrow. I don't even have to graduate by 2014. It'll happen when it happens.  Perhaps I also relate a great deal because the thesis was my first attempts at a large academic tome; the dissertation will be my second. But I keep hearing the song more and more as an anthem for all of us with anxiety towards our work. She doesn't know where to begin, there's pressure weighing down upon her, but the resolve during the bridge is that

"I won't go as a passenger no
Waiting for the road to be laid
Though I may be going down
I'll take in flame over burning out"

She's going to fight back, be an active participant in her life. So instead of me worrying about extraneous factors that are to be dealt with years from now, I'll actively work towards the business at hand. Each day's work might not be perfect, but I won't allow myself to burn out from this stress.

Video embedded below. Notice for the video she used all of her fellow musicians, the ones who she said inspired her through the years. I think there's also a nice lesson with that as well....

the dissertation, Dec 2011

I pitched this idea to my advisor back in mid-August. Given an initial green light, I proceeded forward with my music club fieldwork, whose required background on early clubs and federation only helped to further refine and solidify that this is my topic. As of December, this is the dissertation, as I perceive it.


I will be investigating Musical America, from roughly 1850--1950, and exploring musical feminine idols. Women whose persona exuded femininity and thereby the media overtly emphasized their womanhood. I want to question whether, in an era of more pronounced gendered expectations, there can be a music that actually *is* feminine, and what those musical characteristics might be-- as they are embodied in musical expression, performance, staging, image, etc.

The concept might sound vaguely reminiscent of the master's thesis, but as I wrote in my personal notes back in mid-August, this dissertation will:
-- be more articulate and refined than the master's thesis [which really, isn't that the hope of all scholars?]
-- be more philosophically based
-- be more interpretative (rather than merely reporting phenomenon)
-- have some ethnomusicological roots
-- become more than simply a record of past trends
-- be something that can provoke future research and further debate


And to that today I add that the dissertation:
-- is focused around case study "characters" (women be it actual, idealized, or completely fictional)
-- it also does away with archetyping and tries instead to look at specific receptions of specific creative constructions of femininity. by and large, I hope the case studies will be "actual" women- performers, composers, patrons.... but I do leave room for fictionalized women.
--  looks at certain elements, not entire comprehsive factors of one phenomenon

I wrote back in August that "the goal is not to expand themes of the master's thesis. It is now to take the tools and knowledge developed from the master's thesis and apply it to another medium." I acknowledge readily that my research in Hildegard helped formulate this topic, but it happened earlier too... my fascination with Jenny Lind, and my undying affection for Cecile Chaminade (both ladies whom I suspect will be in this document someway or another). It also helped that I took a philosophy course over the summer, leading to the philosophical question of "can there be a feminine music" 

And this post cannot be completed without saying that yes, Susan McClary will be heavily influential in the foundation of the feminist musicological theories I propose. But I also hope that my general feminist theory class next semester will help (taught by a sociologist), as well as my future aesthetics course. I may not turn into MClary 2.0, but I do hope I can further the field of feminist musicology with this work. 

your time begins now...

(The title refers to that liminal moment when you've done all the preparation for a huge exam. Sitting in the classroom, you are awaiting its start, and with the anticipation rising, the professor makes the announcement. That moment is this post).

There's a new layout of this blog. I'm revamping its design and structure in preparation for the next stage of my academic development. I have spent this past semester in an ethnomusicology class, conducting fieldwork and oral history interviews with the local women's music club. The background research required of this assignment has only further solidified that I have a dissertation topic. It was a meandering path for the past year, but I know the basic gist of what I'll be writing for the foreseeable future, and so now I must begin to roughly sketch it out. Currently I'm still very much in the "background research" reading and methodology outlining phase, but I'm beginning to formulate ideas, case studies, and drafts that need to be chronicled somewhere. As per my advisor's suggestion, it is time to start free-writing to get the process going. Hopefully that means I will generate more content on this site.

I've decided that I will keep a running daily record of the status of my research. Again, suggested by my esteemed advisor as  "a way of getting squirmed down into the chair" (which he learned from Steinbeck). That journal will be placed in my personal notes, thoughts not to be published to the entire world (because really, no one should have to read them). But periodically, I will update here with a couple different kinds of posts (which I will label for easy sorting, if anyone cares for greater organization). Descriptions as follows:

-- general framing, ideology of dissertation (label: diss concept)
-- stories/summaries of individual women, events, or phenomenon (label: diss storytime)
-- important quotations, ideas, or insights derived from specific texts (label: diss lit)
-- memorable primary sources that I've tracked down (label: diss ex's)

This is the next step.... No more anxiety. No more cowboys or Indians for a while. I made a promise to myself over a year ago, and now I am paying up.